JAKARTA, 18 May 2021 – In recent years, Indonesia’s SME sector had seen significant growth, particularly in the participation of women establishing and running their own businesses across various industries. According to Statistics Indonesia (BPS) data from 2018, women managed 64.5% of all SMEs in Indonesia, equivalent to around 37 million businesses. This figure was believed to have continued rising, particularly during the pandemic.

In fact, 40% of women aged 25–34 in Indonesia preferred starting their own businesses to working for someone else’s company, according to Google's Women Will report. Research by the Sasakawa Peace Foundation also identified Indonesia, alongside Thailand, as one of the countries with the highest numbers of women entrepreneurs in the Asia-Pacific region. If women’s participation could be increased to 20%, Indonesia’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was estimated to have the potential to rise significantly to Rp26 quadrillion, or US$1.8 trillion, by 2030.

Advances in digital technology were one of the key drivers behind this positive trend. McKinsey research found that women-led SMEs generated 35% of their revenue through e-commerce, compared with only 15% through offline channels. As digital technology became more advanced, it also made it easier for women entrepreneurs starting their businesses to reach national, and even global, markets with lower costs and greater flexibility.

Josephine Siswanto, Owner and Managing Director of Less For More, and Astri Zakiyyah, Owner of BEYAZ, are two Indonesian women entrepreneurs who experienced first-hand how digital technology made it easier to start and grow an online business. By working with e-commerce enabler SIRCLO, they were able to expand their fashion businesses while maintaining consistent growth in purchases. They shared their perspectives and business journeys during SIRCLO’s Women Empowerment Weeks Conference on 29 April.

“Even with the availability of marketplaces and social media today, we believe that having a website remains essential for building customer trust and strengthening brand identity. Once customers have that trust, they are more likely to stay with the brand in the long term, which is why customer service needs to be optimised to provide the best possible support and respond to their enquiries effectively,” said Josephine.

SIRCLO is an e-commerce enabler in Indonesia that helps brands sell online through a range of solutions, including SIRCLO Store, SIRCLO Commerce, and ICUBE by SIRCLO. SIRCLO Store is an instant online store-building technology that enables brands to establish their own official websites, allowing customers to complete transactions online.

As the need to sell across multiple online channels through a single integrated management dashboard continued to grow, SIRCLO Store introduced a Marketplace feature for managing brand sales across marketplaces, previously known as SIRCLO Connexi, as well as a Chat Commerce feature integrated with the WhatsApp Business API, previously known as SIRCLO Chat.

To simplify day-to-day operations, Josephine relied on two SIRCLO Store features: Website, to manage online sales through the official site shoplessformore.com, and Marketplace, to synchronise sales across Tokopedia and Shopee.

Meanwhile, Astri used the Website feature on SIRCLO Store to strengthen customer trust, enhance brand credibility, and expand sales reach to attract customers from overseas. She also used the Chat Commerce feature to help the team behind BWBYAZ respond to customer enquiries more quickly and efficiently.

“I started the BWBYAZ brand while I was still at university. At the time, I had to manage my time carefully between running the business and completing my coursework. Fortunately, online store technologies such as SIRCLO Store are now available at an affordable cost, helping us serve customers more quickly, efficiently, and easily. This allows us to focus on other, more strategic aspects of the business, such as marketing planning and future business development,” Astri explained.

SIRCLO had supported more than 100,000 brands in growing their businesses online, ranging from SMEs to enterprise brands such as Unilever, Reckitt Benckiser, L’Oréal, and Levi’s.

“Of the five most successful brands currently using SIRCLO Store, we found that three are owned by women. This is a source of pride for us, as it shows how Indonesian women can play a leading role in advancing digitally enabled SMEs. We will continue to innovate by developing more technology-driven features and services, with the hope that more Indonesian women will be empowered to become entrepreneurs and turn their ideas into their own online businesses,” said Brian Marshal, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of SIRCLO.

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About SIRCLO

Founded in 2013, SIRCLO is a leading e-commerce solutions company in Indonesia that helps brands sell online. SIRCLO’s solutions are divided into two main categories: Entrepreneur and Enterprise. Under the Entrepreneur category, SIRCLO offers SIRCLO Store, an online store management platform that enables SMEs to sell across three channels: websites, marketplaces, and chat commerce. For enterprise businesses, SIRCLO provides end-to-end e-commerce enablement through SIRCLO Commerce, as well as omnichannel technology development solutions through ICUBE by SIRCLO.

In April 2021, SIRCLO announced its acquisition of Orami, Indonesia’s first parenting platform to combine Commerce, Content, and Community within a single ecosystem. The acquisition brought together more than 100,000 brands supported in growing their businesses online. SIRCLO’s solutions were trusted by local brands including ATS The Label, Benscrub, Evete Naturals, Namaste Organic, This Is April, and Heytimmy Kidswear, as well as multinational brands such as Unilever, Reckitt Benckiser, KAO, L’Oréal, and Levi’s. At the time, SIRCLO was headquartered at Green Office Park 1, The Breeze, BSD, Serpong, and had 1,000 employees, with representatives based in Bandung, Yogyakarta, and Surabaya.

For more information about SIRCLO, visit www.sirclo.com.